Saturday, July 13, 2013

After a bunch of work, we have finally released the Next Generation Essbase Outline Extractor. So, what is the Next Generation Essbase Outline Extractor? Well, the original outline extractor was written in Visual Basic and Visual Basic has has not been supported by Microsoft for a number of years. In addition, the original Essbase Outline Extractor requires the 32-bit runtime client which is getting harder and harder to support. In addition, users have asked for new functionality over the years and it just wasn't feasible to add the new functionality to a VB based product.

Some people have asked me "What about the new Maxl Outline Extractor?" That is a good question, but keep in mind it only works with 11.1.2.x and higher plus it gives you an XML output. You still have to do something with the XML format for it to be useful.

The Next Generation Essbase Outline Extractor was completely redesigned from scratch. The main design goals were:

Design for long term

Extensible

Use Oracle’s strategic technology

Design for supportability

Wider adoption

Wider platform choices

Less support calls

It was also architected for extensibility to enable new functionality to be added and to allow programmers to write their own extensions to the code. I chose to write the extractor in Java for a number of reasons. First, it is Oracle's strategic API for the future which means new features of Essbase will be available in the Java API first. In addition, Java is multi-platform which means it runs on Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, and MacOS regardless of whether it is 32-bit or 64-bit. In addition, with the Java API, we can ship a single zip download that has everything it needs (except Java itself). There is no need for the runtime client with the new extractor!

The new Outline Extractor also supports a number of features. Many of these features are ne:

Export one or more dimensions in an outline.

Filter members to to be exported by dimension.

Write to multiple outputs on a single pass of the outline.

Output multiple alias tables into a single output file.

Write to Hyperion Planning Outline Load Utility format.

Output to real relational databases via JDBC.

The extractor was also designed to be run by a batch process using Java properties files. The properties files can be written from the GUI interface and directly executed from the GUI. There is even built-in functionality that optionally encrypts the username and password on first usage.

Here are a few screenshots of the new extractor. The first screenshot shows the GUI screen where you can select one or more writers for output.

The second screenshot shows the option screen showing the options for the Load File Text Writer.

About Me

Despite the fact that I often work half-days (12 hours), I am one of the luckiest geeks in the world. I am married to the perfect wife as she is smart, beautiful and provides a tremendous amount of support that makes it possible for me to do all of the things that I do.